Søren Kierkegaard
The first existentialist: the single individual, choice, anxiety and faith.
Ideas
- The leap of faith
- Faith cannot be reasoned into. It is a passionate commitment made in the face of uncertainty.
- Three stages of life
- The aesthetic life chases pleasure, the ethical commits to duty, and the religious stands alone before God.
- Anxiety
- Anxiety is what freedom feels like from the inside: the dizziness of seeing everything you could do.
- Truth is subjectivity
- What matters most is not objective doctrine but how a person lives what they believe.
In their words
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
Start with
- Either/Or (1843)
- Fear and Trembling (1843)
- The Concept of Anxiety (1844)
- The Sickness unto Death (1849)
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